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March 8, 2006

Pakistan: Islamist's Detention Upheld By Court

We reported on February 24 that the leader of Pakistan's Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, was placed under house arrest, after he repeatedly tried to start riots and demonstrations. 67-year old Qazi Hussain Ahmed (pictured) was using the issue of the Danish cartoons to mount protests against the Musharraf government, which he wishes to overthrow.

At the start of Ramadan last year, Ahmed had vowed to set off revolution and bring down the government, as soon as Ramadan came to a close.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed's plans to overthrow the government were put in disarray by the earthquake, four days later, on October 8.

Qazi is head of the MMA, or Muttahida Majlis-e-Ama, an alliance of six Islamist parties. His dictatorial methods were noted by Sami ul-Haq, formerly of the MMA and an imam who trained leading members of the Taliban. Ul-Haq claimed that Qazi distributed parliamentary seats among his family members and engaged in battles between other members of the MMA. Qazi also deliberately boycotted earthquake relief donor meetings.

After his house arrest on 24 February, Qazi was then placed under a house detention order for 30 days, beginning on February 26. According to today's Khaleej Times, he made an appeal to the Lahore High Court, complaining that his detention was "unconstitutional".

Today, the judge at the case, Syed Zahid Hussain, dismissed his petition, saying that he would provide details for his reasons later. Qazi still has a right of appeal against this decision.

The state had argued that Qazi Hussain Ahmed had been "trying to destabilise the government and also instigating people against the country"s elected government."

On February 14 in Lahore, three people were killed in a protest against the cartoons. At the same time, protests in Peshawar then escalated into riots, during which two people were killed, and Western-owned businesses were left in flames.

The Jamaat-e-Islami party has been in existence for 50 years, according to its website. When Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) seceded in 1971 to become an independent nation, the party continued there, under the leadership of Motiur Rahman Nizami (left). According to Muktadhara.net, Nizami was responsible for the killings of thousands of Bengalis as head of an organisation called the al-Badr at the time of independence from Pakistan.

Links between the Jamaat-e-Islami parties in Pakistan and Bangladesh appear to continue. We discussed yesterday some of the links between Bangladesh's Jamaat-e-Islami and the terrorist groups JMB and JMJB which have tried to destabilise the nation through acts of terror. Ataur Rahman Sunny, one of JMB's leaders, has claimed that much of the funding for JMB has come from Pakistan.

The aims of JMB, and Jamaat-e-Islami parties in Bangladesh and Pakistan is to initiate societies totally based upon sharia law, and without democracy.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed supports capital punishment for blasphemy and homosexuality, suggested Robert Spencer.

His biography on his party website describes him thus:

He is a compelling author, an eloquent speaker, a visionary and a man thoroughly equipped with the knowledge of both the sacred and mundane. His love for poetry particularly of Iqbal makes him a unique leader among the religious and political circles.

According to Norway's Aftenposten, Qazi Hussain Ahmed has repeatedly praised Osama bin Laden. A revealing interview from October 2002 can be found in Der Spiegel, in which Qazi Hussain Ahmed condemns democracy and argues for the establishment of sharia law in Pakistan. Such notions were never envisaged in the secular nation of Pakistan when it was founded in 1947 under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

This man may look like a garden gnome, but he is greedy for power, and will stop at nothing to achieve his ends.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 8, 2006 12:23 PM

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